I didn’t wash my hair so much as very briefly rinse it yesterday, when I returned from my second trip to the beach that afternoon. So today, it is wild and stiff and sticky, and I understand why things like sea salt all natural hair spray exist.

Yes. Two full trips to the beach on a Friday afternoon. A Friday which had finally arrived after a week that could have stretched a thousand years–complete with more late homework nights in a row than I’d ever endured before. I really needed to go to the water.

S, T, and I got there first and waded right in. It was sunny, and the waves, though big, were gentle enough. And we floated for a long while. Eventually I swam back to shore, picked my way across the rocky beach and sat, wrapped in my towel, enjoying the warm sun and the calm. Only a few hours later I ended up back at the beach, wading among the waves, picking up rocks and shells, chatting with people I’d only met two weeks earlier, though by now it feels like years.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone swimming in the ocean. This does not count just wading in for a bit, which I’ve done at least once a year for the last two years and marveled at how the sand sucks past my toes and makes me feel like I’m rushing backwards. And I suppose I’m also not talking about going SCUBA diving, where you enter the water from a boat. The last time I fully immersed myself in ocean after running from the sand through the waves, I might have been 11 years old. Whatever age I was, I was smaller, and the waves of course much bigger. And the ocean seemed solely a fierce thing. Ready, willing, even eager to knock me over.

The first time here in Woods Hole that I went to Racing Beach with every intention of swimming, I pulled on my cap and goggles, because of course I wasn’t going swimming just for fun. But serious business swimming. Another person in my program is a varsity swimmer, and we’d decided to help make sure we both were training during our month on shore. Which means trying out our hands at open water swimming along the beach.

I eyed the big choppy waves, a surge of apprehension rolling through my stomach. I wasn’t certain if I knew how to swim in water that moved like that. Even after the first few minutes of the swim, those nerves still played along my spine, making it hard to actually enjoy the process of moving through the water. That swim was a short one, an experiment. But I stepped out of the water thinking, “Okay, I can do this ocean swimming thing.”

So on this day, this long awaited Friday, yes, the waves were large in my mind. But they no longer came up to my eyebrows like they did ten years ago. And I’ve learned a bit about moving in water that moves like the ocean. So I waded right in, and spent a good long time soaking in the salt water, far enough out that my toes barely brushed the rocks and I bobbed in the waves.